"I'll manage it somehow," said the Story Girl--and we had no
doubt that she would. "But I must wait until I'm a little older,
for he wouldn't tell the secret of the west room to a little
girl. And I mustn't wait till I'm TOO old, for he is frightened
of grown-up girls, because he thinks they laugh at his
awkwardness. I know I will like him. He has such a nice face,
even if he is awkward. He looks like a man you could tell things
to."

"Well, I'd like a man who could move around without falling over
his own feet," said Felicity. "And then the look of him! Uncle
Roger says he is long, lank, lean, narrow, and contracted."

"Things always sound worse than they are when Uncle Roger says
them," said the Story Girl. "Uncle Edward says Jasper Dale is a
very clever man and it's a great pity he wasn't able to finish
his college course. He went to college two years, you know.
Then his father died, and he stayed home with his mother because
she was very delicate. I call him a hero. I wonder if it is
true that he writes poetry. Mrs. Griggs says it is. She says
she has seen him writing it in a brown book. She said she
couldn't get near enough to read it, but she knew it was poetry
by the shape of it."

"Very likely. If that blue silk dress story is true, I'd believe
ANYTHING of him," said Felicity.

We were near Golden Milestone now. The house was a big,
weather-gray structure, overgrown with vines and climbing roses.
Something about the three square windows in the second story gave